Newsbeat was roundly criticized for using “clickbait rhetorical questions as headlines” and “legitimizing an indefensible POV,” as award-winning English author Joanne Harris (MBE) charged in a series of tweets.

I put Harris’ valid questions to Newsbeat, along with my own question asking if there’s any ambiguity around whether it’s “OK to grab a woman on the street,” prank or not.

Today, I received the following reply.

Hi Dean,

Thanks for contacting us about the Kim Kardashian tweet.

We accept it could have been worded more carefully.

We swiftly followed it up with a second tweet, headed “obviously not”.

Broadly our tone is more informal than the rest of BBC News but we do aim to provoke conversation around topical issues like this one.

We were not in any way legitimising the “prank” carried out by Vitalii Sediuk.